Joseph Kahn is an American journalist responsible for the surge of anti-transgender coverage in the New York Times from 2022 onward.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851. In 2023 the San Francisco Chronicle cited a Times employee who said the organization has no trans reporters.
Note: for the trans-supportive filmmaker, see Joseph Kahn.
Background
Joseph F. “Joe” Kahn (born August 19, 1964) is one of three children born to executive Leo Kahn and Dorothy Davidson Kahn. Leo Kahn made a fortune in wholesale and retail food sales, first as founder of Purity Supreme and later as a co-founder of office supply retailer Staples. Dorothy Kahn died in 1975; Leo Kahn then married Emily Perkins Gantt Kahn in 1976.
Kahn was a legacy admission at Harvard University, earning a bachelor’s degree in history in 1987 and a master’s degree in East Asian studies in 1990.
In 1989, the Chinese government ordered Kahn to leave the country for working as a reporter while using a tourist visa. Kahn worked at The Dallas Morning News, then the Wall Street Journal before joining the Times in 1998. Kahn was Beijing bureau chief at the Times from July 2003 until December 2007, during which time Kahn and colleague Jim Yardley won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Kahn then served as Deputy Foreign Editor before serving as Managing Editor from 2016 until 2022. That year Kahn was named Executive Editor.
2023 response to over 1,000 trans-supportive colleagues
On February 15, 2023, over 1,000 New York Times contributors signed an open letter objecting to the Times’ increasingly hostile coverage of transgender issues.
On the same day, GLAAD delivered a second letter and organized a protest in front of Times headquarters.
The next day, Kahn and Opinion Editor Katie Kingsbury warned their colleagues they were violating company policy. Their warning conflates the two letters and dismisses the ethical concerns of their colleagues as “advocacy.”
Colleagues,
Yesterday, the New York Times received a letter delivered by GLAAD, an advocacy group, criticizing coverage in The Times of transgender issues.
It is not unusual for outside groups to critique our coverage or to rally supporters to seek to influence our journalism. In this case, however, members of our staff and contributors to The Times joined the effort. Their protest letter included direct attacks on several of our colleagues, singling them out by name.
Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy. That policy prohibits our journalists from aligning themselves with advocacy groups and joining protest actions on matters of public policy. We also have a clear policy prohibiting Times journalists from attacking one another’s journalism publicly or signaling their support for such attacks.
Our coverage of transgender issues, including specific pieces singled out for attack, is important, deeply reported, and sensitively written. The journalists who produced those stories nonetheless have endured months of attacks, harassment and threats. The letter also ignores The Times’ strong commitment to covering all aspects of transgender issues, including the life experience of transgender people and the prejudice and violence against them in our society. A full list of our coverage can be viewed here, and any review shows that the allegations this group is making are demonstrably false.
We realize these are difficult issues that profoundly affect many colleagues personally, including some colleagues who are themselves transgender. We have welcomed and will continue to invite discussion, criticism and robust debate about our coverage. Even when we don’t agree, constructive criticism from colleagues who care, delivered respectfully and through the right channels, strengthens our report.
We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums.
We live in an era when journalists regularly come under fire for doing solid and essential work. We are committed to protecting and supporting them. Their work distinguishes this institution, and makes us proud.
Joe & Katie
During an all-hands meeting, Kahn asked Carolyn Ryan to speak to the newsroom. Via Vanity Fair:
“I want to talk to you briefly about journalistic independence,” Carolyn Ryan said during an all-hands meeting for the New York Times newsroom earlier this month. The Times managing editor, sporting a pinstripe pantsuit, spoke from a stage where she was seated between fellow managing editor Marc Lacey and executive editor Joe Kahn. “We don’t do our work in an effort to please organizations, governments, presidents, activist groups, ideological groups,” she said in a recording of the meeting obtained by Vanity Fair, noting this has been “a bedrock principle of ours for generations” that “many of us feel in our bones” but “can really get obscured in the modern media landscape, which these days has populated with so many more partisan players.”
Ryan praised the paper’s coverage of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision; Astead Herndon’s podcast The Run-Up;Michael Powell’sreport on whether the ACLU was losing its way; and Megan Twohey’s “thoughtful, careful, well-reported story looking at medical treatment for teens who are transitioning and the lack of scientific research around some of the puberty blockers.” She assured the newsroom that they’ll be hearing more about journalistic independence throughout the year. “And sometimes that will be an annoying note on deadlines saying, you know, we can’t use that language because it really…reflects an activist-group way of looking at an issue and we don’t want to do that,” she said, noting being as “panoramic as possible” is not only “good journalism” but “key to how we think about attracting new, more readers and satisfying a need that’s really out there.”
Benedict Carey is an American author and writer who played a key role in laundering anti-LGBTQ propaganda into the New York Times. Carey’s uncritical puff pieces about the work of J. Michael Bailey, Richard Green, Robert Spitzer, and Alice Dreger caused years of delays in debunking that work.
In 2022 I began a campaign to extract an apology from the New York Times and get corrections, updates, or retractions on Carey’s pieces. Because Carey claims part of his job is “exposing BS” and as a professional courtesy, I am giving Carey the first opportunity to revisit these stories. Stay tuned for updates.
Background
Benedict James “Ben” Carey was born March 3, 1960 in San Francisco and grew up mostly in Evanston, Illinois. Carey earned a bachelor’s degree in math from the University of Colorado in 1983. Carey then earned a master’s degree in journalism at Northwestern University in 1985. Carey wrote for trade magazine American Shipper before becoming a staff writer for consumer health and medical magazine Hippocrates (published 1987–2001, renamed Health).
Starting in 1997, Carey began freelancing. In 1998 Carey married writer and publishing executive Victoria Margaret von Biel (born March 2, 1960), who also earned a master’s degree in journalism at Northwestern. Their two children were born soon after. Carey covered health and wellness for the Los Angeles Times from 2000 to 2004. In 2004 Carey moved to the New York Times with returning science journalist Richard “Rick” Flaste. Carey covered science there until 2021.
The Times was notorious for diligently reporting unethical and irresponsible research about sex and gender minorities, almost all of which emanated from the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Their coverage of Robert Spitzer’s poorly supported claims that gay people can change their sexualities was particularly egregious.
Carey and colleague Nicholas Wade were also heavily involved in using the Times science section to promote questionable science that supported their hereditarian viewpoints about scientific controversies, like race and intelligence or sexuality. Carey is a strong believer in disease models of human traits and behaviors, especially mental illness.
2005 anti-bisexual piece
Carey’s piece “Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited” presented J. Michael Bailey’s claims that “true bisexuality” does not exist in males. GLAAD and FAIR condemned the piece. In 2011, a different Times reporter followed up with Bailey’s new claim of suddenly discovering male bisexuality after getting payments from the American Institute of Bisexuality.
2007 anti-transgender piece
Carey delivered a major media coup to Kenneth Zucker and allies who support conversion therapy on gender diverse youth. Carey was given an advance copy of Alice Dreger’s cover-up of J. Michael Bailey’s Danny Ryan “trans cure” fabrication. Carey reported that Dreger’s research into Bailey “concluded that he is essentially blameless.” Carey uncritically repeated Dreger’s strawman claims that trans people believe they are “victims of a biological mistake — in essence, women trapped in men’s bodies.” Carey also glossed over Bailey’s sexual misconduct reported by the woman known as “Juanita” in the book: “she stood by the accusation but did not want to talk about it.”
The site also included a link to the Web page of another critic of Dr. Bailey’s book, Andrea James, a Los Angeles-based transgender advocate and consultant. Ms. James downloaded images from Dr. Bailey’s Web site of his children, taken when they were in middle and elementary school, and posted them on her own site, with sexually explicit captions that she provided. (Dr. Bailey is a divorced father of two.) Ms. James said in an e-mail message that Dr. Bailey’s work exploited vulnerable people, especially children, and that her response echoed his disrespect.
Carey did not note that I was quoting and paraphrasing Bailey’s book, and that I had apologized in 2003 (Bailey’s son, who was an adult in 2003, did not accept the apology and Bailey’s daughter did not respond). Carey reiterated Dreger’s conclusion: “the accusations against the psychologist were essentially groundless.”
I had insisted to Carey’s editors that I be interviewed, so Carey asked me just one question. When my answer was “too long,” Carey said there was only room for 13 words.
Subsequent developments
In addition to a host of other ethics issues, Bailey hosted a live “fucksaw” class demonstration for students that led to Bailey’s signature human sexuality class being permanently canceled by Northwestern. The “fucksaw” incident was not covered by Carey.
Dr. Green, who was also a forceful advocate for gay and transgender rights in a series of landmark discrimination trials,
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association sided with Dr. Green and other influential figures, including Dr. Judd Marmor and Dr. Robert Spitzer, and decided to drop homosexuality from its diagnostic manual.
In his early work, Dr. Green found that many effeminate boys grow up to be gay. He reviewed that and other research in his 1987 book, “The ‘Sissy Boy Syndrome’ and the Development of Homosexuality.”
“If you can’t make a male attracted to other males by cutting off his penis, how strong could any psychosocial effect be?” said J. Michael Bailey, an expert on sexual orientation at Northwestern University.
Dr. Bailey believes that the systems for sexual orientation and arousal make men go out and find people to have sex with, whereas women are more focused on accepting or rejecting those who seek sex with them.
But Dr. Bailey believes the effect, if real, would be more clear-cut. “Male homosexuality is evolutionarily maladaptive,” he said, noting that the phrase means only that genes favoring homosexuality cannot be favored by evolution if fewer such genes reach the next generation.
Carey sourcing Bailey on gay parenting
Carey, Benedict (January 29, 2005). Experts Dispute Bush on Gay-Adoption Issue. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/politics/experts-dispute-bush-on-gayadoption-issue.html
“You can’t force families to participate, and there aren’t that many of them out there to start with,” said Dr. J. Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University who has studied gay men raising boys.
“There is also a strong volunteer bias: the families who want to participate might be much more open about sexual orientation” and eager to report positive outcomes, Dr. Bailey said.
Creager, Cindi (July 7, 2005). New York Times Promotes Bisexual Stereotypes in “Straight, Gay or Lying?” GLAAD https://www.glaad.org/action/write_now_detail.php?id=3827 [archive]
Letters: Debating a hypothesis https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9401E1DD163DF93BA1575BC0A9619C8B63.html
G. Eugene Pichler (2016) The Transsexual Delusion: “On August 21, 2007 Benedict Carey of the New York Times published a damning article into the behavior of Conway et al.”
Alice Dreger (2015) Galileo’s Middle Finger: “Finally, Carey’s piece was published in the New York Times, and he amazed me by his ability to sum up the salient points in a couple thousand words. More important, Carey’s report turned around the public story of what had really happened. Mike was elated. Mike’s family was elated. Ray Blanchard was elated. Scientists all over the world were elated.”
John Casey (2007) letter to NYT editors: “Benedict Carey casts this story as a matter of politically correct thugs trying to undermine Dr. J. Michael Bailey’s legitimate scientific research. But even Dr. Bailey’s defenders admit the research in question turned out to rest on shoddy anecdotal evidence. In light of that fact, the story can’t possibly concern ”the corrosive effects of political correctness on academic freedom,” as someone quoted in the article claims. The question was whether his book had any legitimate scientific basis. And it didn’t. But perhaps that doesn’t make for a very interesting story.”
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Benjamin Boyce is an American YouTuber who promotes alt-right and intellectual dark web viewpoints, with a special focus on gender critical anti-transgender movements. Boyce is a key promoter of the ex-transgender movement.
Note: For the British musical artist born in 1968, see benjamin-boyce.com
Background
Benjamin Arthur Boyce was born on July 7, 1976 in Ukiah, California to Dan and Teresa Boyce. Boyce grew up in a religious household. Boyce’s family moved frequently around California, living in Milpitas, San Jose, Loomis, and Rocklin. Boyce’s parents met in Bible college and reportedly came under the influence of a charismatic minister named Gordon, who had been paralyzed after being shot. The families under Gordon’s control were split up. Teresa was given to another family, and Dan inherited two “spiritual children” from the minors who were part of other families. At 14 Boyce reportedly became “intensely sexual.”
Boyce’s family eventually left the group, and they were shunned. Dan went to a seminary school in Chicago while Benjamin remained behind in Rockland to complete high school, staying with a family that was part of their church.
Boyce attended Covenant Bible College in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, a vocational Bible college which has since closed. Boyce then moved to Chicago in 1995. Boyce’s parents then took over a church in Fresno, California, and Boyce remained in Chicago until age 24. Boyce moved many times looking for a church, eventually moving to Portland. Boyce has been involved in Subud, “a direct spiritual experience of the soul being reawakened by the power of God.”
Boyce got a job at a preschool and would write at night. Boyce is also an aspiring children’s entertainer who has recorded and performed under the names Benjamin, Benzo, Benjamin Arthur, and Benjamin Ampersand.
In 2010 Boyce released the album Scariously, which includes songs like “(I Have Had An) Accident,” about a young child accidentally defecating and then removing soiled clothes.
In 2011, Boyce released the album Wildling under the name Benjamin Arthur. In 2012, Boyce released the EP Combustible Sundress, and in 2013 released the EP confessions of a headless man under the name Eo Ipso. In 2013, Boyce self-published the book Iconogasms under the banner of Critically Othersuch Press.
Boyce attended Evergreen State College from 2013 to 2017 and witnessed a major conflict involving the school’s progressive faction that led to the resignations of professors Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, members of the so-called intellectual dark web. Boyce began commenting about conservative politics following those experiences.
Boyce was an elementary school bus driver for the Griffin School District in Washington State from 2017 to 2020. During that time Boyce founded Othersuch Constructs LLC, which lasted from 2017 to 2018.
Anti-trans activism
In 2018, Boyce started a YouTube channel and podcast called Calmversations, alternately titled The Boyce of Reason. Despite the show’s relaxed tone, Boyce’s guests are often strident critics of progressive aspects of the trans rights movement.
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SaidIt is a social media platform created as an alternative to reddit. After many “gender critical” users and groups were banned on reddit for anti-transgender hate speech, some of those banned users moved to SaidIt.
SaidIt claims it has less censorship than reddit and claims to be “one of the safe havens for truth seekers, alt-historians, and conspirophiles in an increasingly globally thoughtpoliced state.” It is a toxic online community and a service of choice for online anti-transgender content.
SaidIt’s 2022 Google results show two anti-transgender subsaidits among the top results.
Background
SaidIt was founded in 2017.
Moderators
magnora7 (Texas)
d3rr (California)
TheAmeliaMay (Arkansas) aka conservative transgender woman Amelia May Johnson [resigned]
In the past, when the saidit.net domain was shut down, the domain would sometimes redirect to the SaidIt subreddit (r/saiditnet). Calculating the Jaccard index of posts, participants on the SaidIt subreddit accrete into five reddit community clusters:
Michael G. Riley is an American writer and anti-transgender activist. Under Riley’s editorship, academic trade publication The Chronicle of Higher Education favorably covered contributor Alice Dreger’s anti-trans activism on several occasions. This ethically questionable arrangement is part of the publication’s pattern of bias favoring academics in the academic exploitation of sex and gender minorities.
Background
Michael George “Mike” Riley was born on February 10, 1959. Riley earned a bachelor’s degree from Wake Forest University in 1981 and a master’s degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in 1985.
Riley’s first journalism job was at The Dispatch in Lexington, North Carolina. Riley was editor of The Roanoke Times, editor and senior vice president of Congressional Quarterly, and editorial director of Bloomberg Government as well as senior correspondent and bureau chief for TIME magazine.
Riley lives in Arlington, Virginia with spouse Arline and their two children.
Riley was named president and editor in chief of The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2013.
Tom Bartlett is an American writer whose puff piece on Chronicle of Higher Education contributor Alice Dreger appeared in that same publication. This questionable ethical arrangement was apparently greenlit by editor Michael G. Riley.
In addition to helping sexologist J. Michael Bailey cover up the fabricated “Danny Ryan” case report that got Bailey tenure, Dreger is one of history’s foremost pathologizers of sex and gender minorities. Dreger is a key figure in promoting widely outlawed anti-transgender reparative “therapy” techniques developed by fired sexologist Kenneth Zucker. Dreger was named an inaugural member of the right-wing intellectual dark web for these anti-transgender views. Dreger later used connections at TheChronicle to renounce that association.
As is typical with biased reporters, Bartlett rarely reaches out to trans experts and academics for comment, choosing instead to frame any writing on trans issues within what biologist Julia Serano calls the Dregerian narrative.
Thomas Edwin Bartlett was born on July 20, 1974 and grew up in New Mexico. Bartlett earned a bachelor’s degree from Baylor University in 1997 and a master’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin.
Bartlett lives in Austin with spouse Kellie Jo Maxwell Bartlett (born 1973), an artist who creates the Little Niddles and Happily comics and publishes a newsletter titled Pleasant Fluff.
Bartlett’s coverage of academic misconduct started with an article on sex allegations against Indiana State University professor Jerome August “Jerry” Cerny. Bartlett sought comment from J. Michael Bailey, who said, “There’s clearly a politically vocal group who think that sex should not be studied.”
Bartlett then covered Alice Dreger on several occasions, first with Dreger’s spin of ethics allegations against anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon. Bartlett then profiled Dreger as part of promotional press for Dreger’s 2015 book. Because Dreger’s self-promotion represents a sort of wish fulfillment for a certain type of academic or journalist, Dreger became a Chronicle contributor as well as a subject of their reporting. Dreger fell out of favor after requesting a retraction of a 2018 Chronicle article mocking the entire field of academic archivists. In the same way Dreger betrayed Bari Weiss and the intellectual dark web at the first sign of trouble, Dreger threw Chronicle editor Jenny Ruark under the bus when academics objected to Dreger’s attacks on archivists.
Reluctant Crusader: Why Alice Dreger’s writing on sex and science makes liberals so angry (2015)
[excerpt from Tom Bartlett’s article]
So how did Dreger, a person who ditched a tenured professorship to devote herself to full-time advocacy on behalf of those marginalized by the medical establishment, mutate into a torrent-unleashing hatemonger?
The short answer is J. Michael Bailey. Her support of his 2003 book, The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism, embraced a disputed theory of transsexualism that divides male-to-female transsexuals more or less into two categories: those who identify as female and wish to attract men (women “trapped” in male bodies) and those who are sexually aroused by being perceived as female and wish to attract women as well as men. The latter, the theory goes, inhabit a category called autogynephilia, a term that is offensive to some transsexuals who see it as creating a division between “real” transsexuals and those who are merely turned on by the idea. “When they felt that Bailey was fundamentally threatening their selves and their social identities as women — well, it’s because he was,” Dreger writes. “That’s what talking openly about autogynephilia necessarily does.”
Dreger’s defense of Bailey — and of transgender women who see themselves as autogynephiles — put her in the cross hairs of those who believe that the theory Bailey helped popularize is bigoted junk science. For the record, Dreger did ding Bailey for insensitivity, including for using a photo on the cover of his book that depicts a man’s muscled legs in a pair of pumps. But she defended him initially on grounds of academic freedom, and has since become persuaded that he’s right on the science of autogynephilia. That was sufficient for some to deem her a transphobic right-winger.
The Bailey business was complicated by an accusation that he had slept with a research subject — though whether she was a research subject at the time and whether they actually slept together remain hazy. Dreger made an effort to pin down what happened, going so far as to examine emails sent on the night of their alleged congress and to contemplate whether it matters. The publication you’re reading now covered the hubbub back then, and it’s necessary to note that Dreger thought that the coverage missed the mark. Actually she hated those articles and thought they demonized Bailey, though I have to say, reading them now, I don’t see that. (Full disclosure: I’m friends with the reporter and think she’s extremely fair.)
Ancient quarreling aside, the overarching theme of the Bailey episode for Dreger was whether or not a scholar should be allowed to present evidence for a theory that some find profoundly threatening and deeply offensive. The critiques of Bailey often revolved around whether his book was “invalidating to transwomen” — which seemed like a separate question from whether the argument itself had any merit, a question that continues to be debated.
Glenn, David and Bartlett, Thomas (December 3, 2009). Rebuttal of Decade-Old Accusations Roils Anthropology Meeting Anew.Chronicle of Higher Education https://www.chronicle.com/article/rebuttal-of-decade-old-accusations-against-researchers-roils-anthropology-meeting-anew/
Bartlett, Thomas (October 24, 2003). Did a University Let a Sex Researcher Go Too Far? Chronicle of Higher Education https://www.chronicle.com/article/did-a-university-let-a-sex-researcher-go-too-far/
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Jeffrey Paul Robbins (born circa 1950) is an American editor best known for editing and fact-checking one of the most transphobic books ever written, The Man Who Would Be Queen by J. Michael Bailey.
My editor, Jeff Robbins, at Joseph Henry Press, made my writing better than I could. (pp. xii-xiii)
Correspondence
Below is the letter I sent Robbins on May 17, 2003.
Jeffrey Robbins, Senior Editor The Joseph Henry Press 36 Dartmouth St. #810 Malden, MA 02148 Tel. 781-324-4786 Fax 781-397-8255 E-mail: [email protected]
Mr. Robbins–
I maintain an “Our Bodies, Ourselves” type website for transsexual women called tsroadmap.com.
After my business partner’s boyfriend Barry Winchell was beaten to death with a baseball bat because he was dating her, I expanded my efforts from practical matters of gender transition to improving media depictions of our condition.
I am writing to you today because of your involvement in J. Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen. In it, Bailey states that you edited this book and “made my writing better than I could.” (xii-xiii)
Mr. Robbins, you are complicit in the publication of what many in my community believe is the most defamatory book on transsexualism written since 1979. You are responsible for allowing us to be associated with depraved murderers (p. 142) and to be described as little more than socially stunted deviants generally unable to form long-term relationships or even hold “conventional jobs.” (p. 188). Imagine if the following were said about women you know:
“[They] work as waitresses, hairdressers, receptionists, strippers, and prostitutes, as well as in many other occupations.” (p. 142)
I intend to see that you remain clearly linked to this historical document and are held accountable for this outrage during the remainder of your career. I also plan to secure your shameful place in the history of our community’s struggle to enjoy the same basic rights afforded other women. Make no mistake: you will have helped to hurt a great many women and children before we get those rights, and I can assure you your efforts will not go unnoticed.
I will be re-reading the entire text as well and making a painstaking record of all the ways you and Bailey have hurt all of us by bringing out such bigotry in the name of “science.” I will be sending my full findings to the National Academies leadership later this year.
The fact that any publisher allowed this to be printed under the auspices of “science” raises serious concerns about the process by which books are subjected to review at Joseph Henry Press. I intend to assist with the full investigation into how you personally allowed this to happen.
Though I doubt you are, you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself.
[signed]
cc: Barbara Kline Pope, Director Phone: 202-334-3328 E-mail: [email protected]
Robbins did not respond. Below is the form letter sent out by Suzanne Woolsey to anyone who wrote to them. I received my copy on May 22, 2003.
We have received your message about the book, The Man Who Would Be Queen, by J. Michael Bailey, and I am responding on behalf of the National Academies. We appreciate knowing of your concerns and recognize that the contents of this book are controversial. The copyright page of the book carries the following notice: “Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this volume are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences or its affiliated institutions.” This statement applies to all books published by the Joseph Henry Press. Joseph Henry Press publications are not reports of the National Academies, but are individually authored works on topics related to science, engineering, and medicine.
In our opinion, the best response to writing with which one disagrees is more writing. Those who hold views contrary to those expressed in this book are encouraged to present and publish the evidence and reasoning in support of their conclusions.
Sincerely, Suzanne H. Woolsey, Ph.D. Chief Communications Officer
Publishers Weekly is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents.
Bailey’s publisher Joseph Henry Press has been using an excerpt of this review in its publicity, including an ad that ran in The Advocate. The bold part is the selective quotation they use, wisely avoiding the critical part after.
An associate professor of psychology at Northwestern University, Bailey writes with assuredness that often makes difficult, abstract material-the relationship between sexual orientation and gender affect, the origins of homosexuality and the theoretical basis of how we discuss sexuality-comprehensible. He also, especially in his portraits of the women and men he writes about, displays a deep empathy that is frequently missing from scientific studies of sexuality. But Bailey’s scope is so broad that when he gets down to pivotal constructs, as in detailing the data of scientific studies such as Richard Green’s about “feminine boys” or Dean Hamer’s work on the so-called “gay gene,” the material is vague, and not cohesive. Bailey tends towards overreaching, unsupported generalizations, such his claim that “regardless of marital laws there will always be fewer gay men who are romantically attached” or that the African-American community is “a relatively anti-gay ethnic minority.” Add to this the debatable supposition that innate “masculine” and “feminine” traits, in the most general sense of the words, decidedly exist, and his account as a whole loses force.
Choice is a publication by the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). In September 2003, an unnamed reviewer at Choice wrote one of the few positive reviews for the transphobic book The Man Who Would Be Queen by J. Michael Bailey. This led to several academic libraries spending limited resources on a hardcover book that was available for free online from the publisher Joseph Henry Press.
Marketing Director Ann Merchant quoted Choice in revised promotional material for the book:
“Bailey is a sympathetic and compassionate believer who wants to convert others. This is a fascinating read… Summing up: Highly recommended.”
CHOICE, September 2003, via Joseph Henry Press (PDF)
2004 Stonewall Book Award nomination
In December 2003, Cecil Hixon, Chair of ALA’s 2004 Stonewall Book Award Committee, announced that Bailey’s book was one of 39 books shortlisted as a nonfiction nominee. The winner was John D’Emilio’s Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin.
The National Academies Press (NAP) was created to publish the reports issued by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). It publishes nearly 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in the sciences.
